Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Sergeant Wilson]

9 minutes ago, Wee Willie said:

You're certainly no mad wullie

This is my 9th/10th week self isolating in my wee flat.

The only folk I see are my lassie and one grandaughter when they bring my messages.

I live off my wee state pension and a wee railway pension.

The DWP reckon I don't have enough to live off so they pay roughly 2/3rds of my monthly rent.

There's no such thing as a wee railway pension.

[dirty dingus]

2 minutes ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

There's no such thing as a wee railway pension.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

So you don't agree then?

Have a read of this - an interesting piece on hindsight bias and coronavirus by Andrew McCall-Smith - who is a British-Zimbabwean writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh.  

 

 

McCall Smith is a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees concerned with these issues.

 

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/inews.co.uk/opinion/columnists/alexander-mccall-smith-hindsight-wonderful-thing-coronavirus-crisis-2851066%3famp

 

"Alexander McCall-Smith: hindsight is a wonderful thing when it comes to the coronavirus crisis

 

 

We think we would have done much better at arming ourselves against events, but our judgement might be too harsh.

 

 

We’re all amateur virologists and epidemiologists now. How many conversations have you had on viruses, on the R number, on the finer points of immunity?

 

 

How many times have you expressed a view on the risk of surface transmission?

 

 

All of this, of course, is quite understandable. We are in disturbing and uncharted territory and it would be odd if we had nothing to say about it.

 

 

Now, we are at the stage in the crisis when blame is being laid at various doors, and some of the allegations of a lack of openness, or what used to be called lying, may well be justified. But if we have any concern for fairness, we should remind ourselves of hindsight bias.

 

 

The psychologists have plenty to tell us here. In simple terms, hindsight bias operates when we look back on an event or series of events and say, “Of course that was bound to happen.”

 

 

Because something is foreseeable in our eyes, we blame others for their failure to have taken action at the right time.In our current context, this involves statements such as, “It was foreseeable six months ago that there would be a shortage of protective equipment in the event of a pandemic”.

 

 

That may be true, but as often as not our judgements of what was foreseeable are affected by our knowledge – acquired later – of what actually did happen.

 

 

Psychologists have been able to demonstrate this experimentally: take any sequence of events in a causal sequence and list them as events one to 10. For example: (1) a dog negligently let out of garden (2) runs into road (inset, 3) where it causes motorist to swerve (4) and this causes a lamp-post to topple (5) which causes a power cut, and so on up to (10) causes a major fire in a factory.

 

 

Ask yourself whether it would have been foreseeable at the time when event one occurred that in due course consequence 10 would ensue. Because you know the full sequence of events, you may well say, “Of course; anybody could have predicted that 10 would be the eventual result”.

 

 

However, if a different list of events goes from one to, say, 5, and withholds events 6 to 10, what would you say would be the foreseeable result? It is possible that you might correctly identify event 10, but in practice it is far more likely that you won’t be able to.

 

 

 

The implications of this are fairly clear. Hindsight bias makes ex post facto experts of us all.

 

 

It leads us to believe that conduct which may have been perfectly reasonable at the time was, in fact, faulty because it failed to anticipate what we now see as obvious.

 

 

Our judgements of responsibility may therefore be far too harsh.

 

 

We think we would have done much better at arming ourselves against events, but the reality is that we could well have done exactly what those whom we are criticising did.

 

 

That does not mean that we cannot or should not assess what has been done, or what has failed to have been done. However, the most important thing, surely, is for lessons to be learned rather than for individuals to be singled out for criticism."

 

 

 

[NotThePars]

2 hours ago, Marshmallo said:

There are Posters on here with over 20k "green" reputation who post nothing but inane generic filler. It used to bother me when I was trying to crack the formula for hitting the Top 10 but now I couldn't give a shiny shit to tell you the truth.

Some proper sad acts on here who live for The Reputation System.

Aye mate completely agree. Everyone (rightfully) goes through a sustained period of trying to crack the formula but once you realise the Box Office mindset is about more than green dots you can sit back, relax and let the good times roll. 

 

What a website.

[engelbert_humperdink]

1 hour ago, oaksoft said:

Now that is a bit of dramatic licence right there.

And a bit of moral high ground grabbing to ensure you win the argument.

Lovely. 

We are not going to see tens of millions of deaths no matter what we do with this virus.

He has been overly dramatic, but then from the sounds of his post he is in the vulnerable group. I wonder what is attitide would have been if he was young and healthy

[madwullie]

1 hour ago, welshbairn said:

 

Fair enough. It's not true that they can't get treatment though, just experimental stuff, so for most people it's carrying on as normal. I don't understand why the first lady who was on an experimental treatment that had extended her life for 6 years would suddenly have it cut off though. If there's not more to the story that's outrageous. The other one who hadn't even started a trial is more understandable, the chances of a big gain are tiny in most trials compared to catching covid, and she's probably already immunodeficient.

I'm on kind of experimental treatment, and I asked my onc about the chances of it being stopped during CV and he basically said that I'm exactly the kind of person they'd be making sure continued with it being young, healthy and fit. Even if I caught it, I'd have a really good chance of getting through it without much more issue than another person my age. 

I do know people who are trying to get on trials (in England), and they aren't able to, I think because enrollment for trials has been paused. Whether that's because most people on trials are in a bad way and therefore at severe risk, or that money is not available, or whatever I'm not sure though. 

[s_dog]

3 hours ago, engelbert_humperdink said:

The government knew fine well before the virus arrived here the vulnerable groups but instead of protecting them, they were thrown to the lions resulting in needless deaths. Because of this for the last 8 weeks the freedoms and the security of healthy people has been taken away from them. Vulnerable people should have been isolated and the rest allowed to go on as normal to build herd immunity.

To move elderly patients into care homes without testing them and/or being able to isolate them, has led to some pretty horrific numbers of avoidable death and is something the gov should be held accountable for in future. I'd like to think it was down to poor planning (which has undermined the entire response to the pandemic), and driven by the fear of hospitals potentially struggling to meet the demand if the numbers got out of control rather than a callous decision though. 

The decision to go into and stay in lockdown for two months was driven by the possibility of not doing so leading to deaths in the hundreds of thousands and not 'just' tens of thousands.  Remember at the start they were telling us that it was just elderly, vulnerable & those with underlying health conditions that were likely to become really ill and die, but while the vast majority are in these groups, the surprise has been the number of not so old, with no underlying health conditions that have needed hospital treatment and in some cases have died. There's been people in their 20's with no health conditions who have died. This is with a lockdown, what on earth would it have been like without one? Yet you can sit there and say och we'll just build herd immunity and it'll be fine. What planet are you on? If everyone was wandering about as normal, there would have been many more infections, and things could have got out of control with hospitals struggling to cope. And you can't just ignore all the interactions that are needed with 'vulnerable people', while everyone's building up herd immunity that would just mean more of a risk of those vulnerable groups being infected.

Once they get the numbers of people infected down to manageable levels, where they can properly test, trace and isolate, and also be able to test the many people who interact with those considered at high risk regularly and particularly once they get a reliable anti-body test in the numbers needed, then things can start to go back to normal. Until then, no we can't keep going on as we are right now, as the consequences of it are pretty grim too, but it's not just media driven fear, its about taking small steps in a return to normal in a bid not to have another wave of it and another round of tens of thousands of deaths.  

 

 

[engelbert_humperdink]

1 minute ago, NotThePars said:

Aye mate completely agree. Everyone (rightfully) goes through a sustained period of trying to crack the formula but once you realise the Box Office mindset is about more than green dots you can sit back, relax and let the good times roll. 

 

What a website.

I've been more of a long time lurker, but the fascination with greenies from complete strangers on an internet forum is strange behaviour. Any budding psychologists would have hours of study 9n some of these threads

[madwullie]

9 minutes ago, engelbert_humperdink said:

He has been overly dramatic, but then from the sounds of his post he is in the vulnerable group. I wonder what is attitide would have been if he was young and healthy

I am young and pretty healthy. I do have cancer though. My thoughts would have been the same though, as I'm not the type of person who thinks other people's lives are worth risking to remove an inconvenience from my life, and I think it is worth some inconvenience to help others.

If you think about it, people in my position actually have more to lose from lockdown, as our time is short/medium term limited, and therefore 3 months out my life is more of my total life to go than someone with no health issues who is 20. We may have life plans such as travelling that we'll never be able to accomplish now. Another point which doesn't change my position fyi 

The "dramatic" post in question was clearly meant to be, and was a bit tongue in cheek but was referring to global deaths from stuff like plague, when all we had to fight it with was quarantine and "herd immunity", a position you had been taking. For f**k sake. 

Edited May 19, 2020 by madwullie

[pandarilla]

Folk who are generalising about millenials or pensioners are really contributing nothing positive here.

There are plenty of poor pensioners and a good shed load who are doing very well. Some are scared and shielding and some are thinking f**k that and going out like a mother fucker.

Same with any age. Plenty of numpties, plenty of arseholes, plenty of guid c***s.

[Melanius Mullarkey]

1 minute ago, pandarilla said:

Folk who are generalising about millenials or pensioners are really contributing nothing positive here.

There are plenty of poor pensioners and a good shed load who are doing very well. Some are scared and shielding and some are thinking f**k that and going out like a mother fucker.

Same with any age. Plenty of numpties, plenty of arseholes, plenty of guid c***s.

Yes, well that kind of sitting on the fence, lily livered, yellow bellied beige kind of post is all good and well but it’s not going to escalate any petty fights between strangers on an inconsequential Scottish football forum, is it?

[craigkillie]

5 hours ago, ayrmad said:

A fair chunk of those vulnerable folk will have had to endure similar during and after WWII, hopefully they didn't moan half as much back in the day. 

People went through a lot during and after WWII, but there was nothing like this much restriction on personal freedoms on a day to day basis. People could still go out as much as they want during the days and meet their families and friends, and there were no issues with lockdowns or social distancing. There were other very different constraints on life - people away fighting, rations, blackouts and so on, but those are very different to what we are experiencing now and I don't see the point in comparing them.

Edited May 19, 2020 by craigkillie

[engelbert_humperdink]

1 minute ago, s_dog said:

To move elderly patients into care homes without testing them and/or being able to isolate them, has led to some pretty horrific numbers of avoidable death and is something the gov should be held accountable for in future. I'd like to think it was down to poor planning (which has undermined the entire response to the pandemic), and driven by the fear of hospitals potentially struggling to meet the demand if the numbers got out of control rather than a callous decision though. 

The decision to go into and stay in lockdown for two months was driven by the possibility of not doing so leading to deaths in the hundreds of thousands and not 'just' tens of thousands.  Remember at the start they were telling us that it was just elderly, vulnerable & those with underlying health conditions that were likely to become really ill and die, but while the vast majority are in these groups, the surprise has been the number of not so old, with no underlying health conditions that have needed hospital treatment and in some cases have died. There's been people in their 20's with no health conditions who have died. This is with a lockdown, what on earth would it have been like without one? Yet you can sit there and say och we'll just build herd immunity and it'll be fine. What planet are you on? If everyone was wandering about as normal, there would have been many more infections, and things could have got out of control with hospitals struggling to cope. And you can't just ignore all the interactions that are needed with 'vulnerable people', while everyone's building up herd immunity that would just mean more of a risk of those vulnerable groups being infected.

Once they get the numbers of people infected down to manageable levels, where they can properly test, trace and isolate, and also be able to test the many people who interact with those considered at high risk regularly and particularly once they get a reliable anti-body test in the numbers needed, then things can start to go back to normal. Until then, no we can't keep going on as we are right now, as the consequences of it are pretty grim too, but it's not just media driven fear, its about taking small steps in a return to normal in a bid not to have another wave of it and another round of tens of thousands of deaths.  

 

 

It wasnt poor planning the government overreacted to the covid threat and the NHS being overloaded which hasn't happened but has led to the deaths of thousands in care homes who were papped off to care homes untested, imo that is a crime that should see court. There are going to be the exceptions with healthy people succumbing to covid but miniscule numbers on the grand scheme of things. It doesn't help that any death with covid present seems to be the root cause of death even if they were in pallative care with days left and the covid not even being the driving force behind their death.  I'm not saying what is best for now imo the lockdown should have been sharp and focused on the vulnerable not the healthy. People acting on here like I'm some monster that wants to see carnage. A quarter of uk deaths are in care homes ICU cases dropping, deaths dropping. The lockdown was half arsed with cheltenham going ahead  many more will have been infected than not. Hope those asymptomatic are high in number

[Sergeant Wilson]

5 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

 plenty of guid c***s.

Name one.

[engelbert_humperdink]

6 minutes ago, madwullie said:

I am young and pretty healthy. I do have cancer though. My thoughts would have been the same though, as I'm not the type of person who thinks other people's lives are worth risking to remove an inconvenience from my life, and I think it is worth some inconvenience to help others.

If you think about it, people in my position actually have more to lose from lockdown, as our time is short/medium term limited, and therefore 3 months out my life is more of my total life to go than someone with no health issues who is 20. We may have life plans such as travelling that we'll never be able to accomplish now. Another point which doesn't change my position fyi 

The "dramatic" post in question was clearly meant to be, and was a bit tongue in cheek but was referring to global deaths from stuff like plague, when all we had to fight it with was quarantine and "herd immunity", a position you had been taking. For f**k sake. 

First paragraph assumes that I am selfish, infact I'm just as concerned about those healthy who have been unable to work, lost jobs, financially worse off and the mental impact this is having on the majority of the country than people like yourself who for obvious reasons need to isolate. If I was in the vulnerable category and young I would self isolate. but  not falling into that  category  I would probably have more chance dying of something else than covid.

[Honest Saints Fan]

10 minutes ago, madwullie said:

I am young and pretty healthy. I do have cancer though. My thoughts would have been the same though, as I'm not the type of person who thinks other people's lives are worth risking to remove an inconvenience from my life, and I think it is worth some inconvenience to help others.

If you think about it, people in my position actually have more to lose from lockdown, as our time is short/medium term limited, and therefore 3 months out my life is more of my total life to go than someone with no health issues who is 20. We may have life plans such as travelling that we'll never be able to accomplish now. Another point which doesn't change my position fyi 

The "dramatic" post in question was clearly meant to be, and was a bit tongue in cheek but was referring to global deaths from stuff like plague, when all we had to fight it with was quarantine and "herd immunity", a position you had been taking. For f**k sake. 

This is on cancer research website. 

[engelbert_humperdink]

1 minute ago, Honest Saints Fan said:

This is on cancer research website. 

Thats pretty sickening

[engelbert_humperdink]

12 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

Typical post of someone who hasn't had their 5k green dot gold sovereign delivered.

Busted, need to dig out the dodgy puns and questionable looking nurses

[ICTChris]

MEANWHILE IN NEW YORK

https://twitter.com/smencimer/status/1262839942734061573?s=20

[Fullerene]

39 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Have a read of this - an interesting piece on hindsight bias and coronavirus by Alexander McCall-Smith - who is a British-Zimbabwean writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh.  

FYI He also wrote several books starting with "The No 1 Lady Detective's Agency" set in Botswana that the BBC turned into a mini series about 11 years ago.